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I am Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I am also the editor of the academic journal The Latin Americanist.

Wednesday, June 07, 2017

If you need a translation from academic-speak, "historicize" means "find a way to put in tons of caveats to prevent any actual statement against the government from being made." LASA has put out plenty of "one-sided" resolutions over the years. There was one on Obama policy four years ago that was literally incoherent. I also should note, though, that last year's statement condemning Dilma Rousseff's ouster was spot on. And correctly one-sided! Nobody asked to "historicize" that.

Focusing on the government is appropriate. The state (in any functioning polity, not just Venezuela) has far more power than civil society and in Latin America has the responsibility (as stated in international agreements) of governing democratically. Giving the Venezuelan opposition responsibility for the Venezuelan government's repression is wrong.

1 comments:

You want them to release a resolution supporting the terrorist groups that are putting barbed wire the streets, dropping grenades on the supreme court, burning black men with gasoline, attacking a maternity ward that had infants in it, pulling innocent truck drivers out of their cars and lighting them on fire on the highway. Is that the ultra-right opposition that you want LASA to support? The people who rather then wait for an election, would prefer to destroy the country-- all the while getting their CIA money and relying on the elite centric reporting of the world's private media.. Is that who you want LASA to support?